I hope everyone had a safe winter and are enjoying the warmer weather we are having currently. I would like to thank the membership of UAW Local 4911 for their awesome donation of $1,500 for school supplies that were greatly needed at Averill Elementary School. With all of the cuts to education from the State Legislators, more teachers are having to buy supplies with their own money. Items that you would think should be covered as needed materials to benefit our children are not being made available to them.
I spoke with Mr. Kyron Harvell, the Principal at Averill, and asked him if our Local could help with this problem and he was very appreciative of the offer. I asked for him to send me a list of needed supplies and we would do our best to purchase what they needed. The list included from crayons, hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, playground equipment, scissors, play dough, Kleenex, staplers, staples, hi-liters, markers, etc.
I then contacted Chris Wilson, the store director for the Okemos Meijer and told him what we were planning to do and asked if he could help us with the list. Chris asked me to email the list and that he would have a few team members gather everything together for us. When I arrived at the store, Chris and his team which, included Kaitlyn and Cindy, had gotten almost everything on the list and had it rung up. We just needed to gather a few more items.
We loaded everything up and brought it back to the Local to be put into bags and dropped off at the school. I contacted Mr. Harvell and let him know that we were able to get everything they were asking for. I also contacted Harold Foster from the Lansing Labor News so he could take some pictures and he graciously accepted and came over on short notice. We met Mr. Harvell on April 11 and he was very excited to receive the supplies that our membership had donated and could not thank us enough. I am very proud to represent such an awesome Local, one who cares about their community. (See page 2 for the presentation to Averill Elementary.)